The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
Modern societies are critically dependent on energy. All aspects of modern life, ranging from consumer and business devices to the powering of mechanical tools, require the consumption of energy. As traditional energy sources are depleted or become less accessible through regulations, energy costs increase, providing incentives for increasing energy production efficiencies and lowering energy costs. For example, costs associated with hydrocarbon-based energy production have increased significantly over the past decade. Therefore, it would be advantageous to generate energy utilizing alternative means of energy production.
Energy generated utilizing phase transitions of matter is one means of generating electric or mechanical-based energy without using hydrocarbons. A phase transition is the transformation of mass in a thermodynamic system from one state of matter to another. During a phase transition of a given substance, certain properties of the substance change as a result of some external condition, such as temperature and pressure. For example, a liquid may become gas as pressure decreases or a gas may become a liquid as pressure increases in a thermodynamic system. Changes in conditions of a gas are generally described by the Ideal Gas Law: PV=nRT
Where P is the absolute pressure of the gas; V is the volume; n is the number of particles in the gas; R is the gas constant; and T is the absolute temperature. The work created, and therefore the maximum potential energy which can be collected from an ideal gas expansion, assuming that the pressure remains constant, is nRT*ln(Vmax/V0) where Vmax is the maximum volume when expanded, and V0 is the initial volume before expansion. For simplicity of the equation, it is assuming that the gas is prevented from expanding while the gas is heated, then allowed expand once it has reached full temperature. This is described by the integral of pressure multiplied by a change in volume for the volume change over V0 to Vmax. Note, that the expansion of the gas does not cause a significant change in temperature, therefore a temperature gradient would remain.
The efficiency of the energy that can be collected by gas expansion, and compression between the two chambers would be limited to the Carnot Efficiency, i.e., (Th−Tc)/Th, however efficiency is based exclusively on the work created by ideal gas expansion, and does not consider the possibility of collecting potential energy by other means as it transfers across the gradient. Therefore, it would be advantageous to for an engine to generate energy using phase transitions and thermoelectric generators.